Top Affiliate Challenge Sucks
Ok so I’m not sure if I’m the first one to write about this…but the Top Affiliate Challenge TV show officially sucks. It looked like it could be O.K. at best, but after finding out how it works and watching the first episode, I can confirm why I knew it would be a waste of time and money to audition and try to get on the show. Here’s why :
- Their whole “business model” for competition is stupid. The goal is to make “as much money as possible through affiliate marketing”. They look at revenue as making money, and not profit. So a team can spend $5,000 in PPC and only make $1,000 in revenue. That’s a $4,000 net loss but in the eyes of TAC, you just made $1,000.
- How do they expect you to learn and get a profitable campaign running in like 2 hours? The team that wins will simply be the team that takes a little loss and switches their campaigns over to the team’s affiliate link. I was working with Team XY7 a little and was about to move over a campaign that does ~$1,500/day (they would still fund it), but just thinking about doing something like that for this show is completely pointless. That’s totally against the point of having a challenge to find the “top affiliate”.
- The camera work looks like it was done with a $100 Flip video camera and edited by a 15 year old freshman in high-school. There’s cheesy ass hues on the border of the screen, ridiculous looking fonts, the whole thing looks insanely cheap. They’ll be talking and it will just break the frame and cut to a new one, it’s not smooth at all.
- The host looks like she just learned how to read and is reading the script off a piece of paper. Oh wait, you’ll see her looking at the ground all the time, and the awesome camera man has her script showing laying on the floor.
- The gurus pulled together their elite resources and drove a massive $200 revenue for the win on the first day.
- We have The Apprentice in NYC, American Idol is Los Angeles, Survivor on some crazy Chinese island, and Top Affiliate Challenge in…Nebraska. Could they have picked a more boring venue?
- I just skimmed through the second episode which leaked on Google Video. Team XY7 lost, so one of their teammates was going to get voted off. Then they had an individual immunity challenge, somebody from a different team won it. Why the hell would someone that wouldn’t get voted off anyways win an immunity ring? The guy is a saint though and ends up giving it to someone from XY7. The hostess then tells him it doesn’t even matter, because that person is safe anyways. Umm…pointless?
My prediction : many affiliates on the show will truly realize how pointless the competition is and when that happens, things will start to get really stupid and it’ll be funny to see how the TAC deals with it. That’ll at least be some entertainment.
I have nothing against Thor as he was nice to me when I chatted with him about auditioning, but the show is a complete mess. I can’t even sit through a full episode without being completely bored to death, the show teaches absolutely nothing about affiliate marketing, and since it’s not even entertaining it’s completely pointless to watch.
Wow, you weren’t kidding on the cheesy graphics – looks like it was filmed in the 80’s. It’s like the saved by the bell intro without that killer song and shots of screech. ;)
If you think the first two episodes content was bad… just wait until episode three hits…
Yeah, I have to agree with you Paul.
I was really disappointed within the first minute of watching Episode 1. So cheesy and fake, camera work is really bad, always at the wrong angles and just overall really really bad.
I haven’t seen the 2nd episode yet, but I don’t think I will be watching it anyways. I am just starting out in affiliate marketing and was really looking forwards to learning a few things, however, I highly doubt that I will be learning anything of value from the TAC.
yooouuuuuu are right! funny how collins dad asked if the reality show was made by wedding videographers…. so true…. lol
Sad but true. You comments voiced all of my concerns with the show. Messed up that my dog Ian had to fly out there. Messed up.
“We have John Chow, the black hat of black hats”
How is John Chow black hat?!
I kinda wonder how you think about John Chow. Do you also see him as the “blackhat of blackhats”? … ROFL!
I think that’s a little harsh. Don’t you think the video quality is because of the issue of video size? Did you even watch the first episode when the quality was at its highest? Maybe you should help them out on how to launch a successful product.
sad… had potential but the show is horribly. How the challenges are formed are stupid and they don’t even show anything about how they market in the episodes. Further more I do not understand how the top team only made 230 dollars… I though Jonathan Van Clute (or wtv his name is) said he can drive 30,000 uniques per hour.
I feel back knocking it cuz thor put lots of work into it but it seems he slacked off in the most important part of the entire show…
Well let’s be honest here.
Affiliate Marketing is boring shit. You, in general, sit in isolation and plug away at the internets for hours and hours a day. Then when you take a break, you find it hard to take your mind off of your campaigns and the internet. Thus, affiliate marketers, in general, are pretty fucking boring.
I saw pictures of the TAC and wanted to blow my fucking brains out.
Even if it was hilarious mothers like nickycakes or the clowns at wickedfire it would still be a boring ass show. Affiliate marketing is not made for TV, folks…… especially if it’s being shot in FUCKING NEBRASKA!
I thought the first episode was alright, nothing special like..
I recommend the NIM, much better then this stupid TV show. Check it out paul: http://www.nextinternetmillionaire.com – not about affiliate marketing, but you can still learn a lot there
I haven’t yet seen any episodes as I’ve recently got back off holiday, by the sounds of it I shouldn’t waste the time.
If you want some good comedy :)
I’m sure Thor is doing the best he can with the resources he’s got, but I think he should have been more patient and built up a good number of sponsors.
Clearly he’s had to skimp on bits and pieces of the show (cameramen), and perhaps should have done a bit more research into putting together a show like this.
I’ve been wanting to blog about this for a long time and I just didn’t want to say anything on my company blog, so I’ll say it here. You’re totally right. The whole thing is completely unprofessional. Did you notice that every person has a different font for their name, including Comic Sans? Also, did you notice that at about 6:10-6:30 of the first episode, they screwed up the editing and had a repeat of the same thing being said, and yes the first shot had the host reading directly off the paper.
Also, on day one it looked like they tried to host the video files themselves and couldn’t pull it off. I don’t know why they didn’t just use YouTube or Revver or whatever else off the bat. Revver has WAY better video quality than Google Video, heck so does YouTube. Why not let someone else host it at also have the social community hooks of a YouTube, oh yeah cuz then you can’t inflate the stats and you might also get a ton of negative comments on YouTube. Then again, if the show didn’t suck it might get a following on YouTube.
$200 in a day for the win? WTF? What a joke! Clearly Shoe isn’t exactly going full out on this cuz if he was hardcore trying to win, we all know he could have his team put up the big numbers.
Of course, have you ever wondered if this whole thing isn’t just a way for Thor to have a few talented people and a bunch of scrubs come in and build a bunch of affiliate marketing campaigns for him since he isn’t very good at doing it himself. In fact, apparently Thor only made like $100 last year from Azoogle. He mentioned it in this blog post where he was compalining about Azoogle’s service as compared to CPA Empire: http://www.thorschrock.com/2008/01/15/cpa-empire-sets-example-for-affiliate-service/
What a joke right? A guy who made $100 last year in affiliate marketing is doing a show to find the “Top Affiliate”? Seriously? What do you bet that after this, the guy starts doing e-books and webinars or whatever else about making money online through affiliate marketing? After all, Thor did get his internet biz training from Joel Comm, and he seems to be following the Joel Comm playbook to the letter, even copying Joel’s fairly successful “online reality money making show” idea.
Even if Thor doesn’t go the e-book/webinar/cheesy marketing junk route, I still think he’s going to take the affiliate campaigns these people setup and call them his own when this is all said and done. I actually think it’s kind of a brilliant idea except for the fact that the odds are that Thor will try and position himself as an expert or guru himself after the show, which clearly he is not.
I dunno, the whole thing reflects really badly on our industry IMO. I’m a bit disappointed in the companies that have got behind TAC, but I think that the show really struggled to get advertisers and it became cheap enough that it wouldn’t be a bad deal for them, even if the show did suck.
Just think how many people will watch this show and thing that THIS is what affiliate marketing is all about. When you tell people that you do affiliate marketing, do you want them to think TAC?
Jonathan Van Clute can drive traffic….LOL. If he is driving 30k an hour and only making $230 a day, that explains why he went on a internet reality show to prove his “skillz”. Lame.
‘NIM’ is complete bullshit.
i really dont know what to say about this one but to tell you if they are in the hands of good managers, it would be coolio and i like the way they are profiling them super affiliates!
Is it shot in Nebraska? Haha – worst place on earth, no question – what a waste of time to watch it!
Nebraska is just fine dumbass. I don’t know how stupid people can complain about a place.
Did you guys pay attention to the show? They didn’t receive any money to work with. If you wanted to switch out your campaigns for the team’s aff. link you can but then you’re spending your own money with nothing in return. I’m not sure any one here could do a better job at “teaching” anything or doing a show.
All your points are right on except the last one, but that doesn’t even matter.
I’m not going to single anyone out, but you didn’t even mention the contestants are overall boring and hard to watch. Lets face it we all want the show to be informative, but for it be successful it still has to have entertaining and interesting people.
There are only about 3-4 people who I find actually have the type of personality to be on the show and are actually watchable. Everyone else seems boring, awkward and are simply hard to watch…and some try way too hard making it even worse.
30k uniques an hour bahahahahahahahaha
What is the problem with Nebraska?! IMO the Midwest is one of the most beautiful places in the world, course it helps that I’m from the Midwest, currently I’m in Florida and working on getting back there, specifically Chicago, jeez it’s the heartland of our great country.
Opinions killed many.
I still watch it. It’s only 30Mins a day and it’s the only show around on aff marketing so what the hell? who knows, if they are reading these blogs that are bashing it maybe next episode will be better :-)
Why the hell are they publicizing affiliate marketing on TV. Do they truly want the whole world to know about this market and create more useless competition for the serious people in the business.
Get people high on the unreality of making money online fast and then shattering their dreams when they find out they can’t make a dime. What does that do when you have 1000 clue less people trying to promote whatever on paid search…you get pointless competition.
Were the creators of this affiliate marketing show hoping to make money off their show?
Problem is Chow is a blogger. Shoemoney makes money with established sites. And I’ve never heard of the third guy. They need to get some real super affiliates in there that know how to make money through affiliate offers with no established traffic sources ie ppc. Plus Nebraska is the most un-tech place on earth.
I like it, ground breaking entertainment on our topic of interest. People are taking it too seriously maybe?
But I only watched episode 1 so far.
Is this supposed to be a joke? Because it looks like a huge one.
Please, son.
Chicago’s dope. The show would be a lot better if it was in Chicago.
I think if it was in New York, New York, LA, Miami, etc etc it would better display the type of lifestyle Affiliate Marketing can bring. And that would make the show a helluva lot cooler.
Haha…
Yeah, it’s a joke. Just look at the site, looks like some retard from 96′ designed it up. The only thing missing is a nice animated swinging door sign that says “Enter”. It was done be none other than the infamous Shrock Innovations Computer Repair of Nebraska – lol.
You would also think azoogle would give them a legit logo to use, not a rip off. Azoogle was probably like “Ok ok… stop harassing us, here’s a Digitcam and $50 bucks, just mention us somewhere if you want”.
I don’t think they could have doen a worse job with that crappy show if they tried to. What a complete JOKE!
I also heard the contestants have to use their own money yet the show keeps the profits, that rules out ppc and any legit way of generating traffic very quickly. So what do we have left seo (the show will be over when they rank) and then various methods of spam at some level or another. What a great concept for a show these guys came up with, seriously.
lol, the host sounds like she either has a cold or she has been smoking for 5+ years. I like how Shoemoney is just dragging the whole show down by not really trying to hard also.
But I know what you mean about switching aff links over- which doesn’t make it a competition.
Chicago ranks as the least free ( in other words, biggest Nanny Government city) city in the United States and it isn’t even close. It is basically the City most opposite of Las Vegas ( where for some strange reason adults are not treated like children). Everything fun is banned and sales tax is over 10%. Fun place.
The real problem with this show is the lack of structure. You can’t expect it to be a top-budget production because realistically they are testing out a new concept and I would imagine that there weren’t a whole lot of sponsors ready to jump on board right off the bat.
That being said, the structure of the show is absolutely horrible and that is where there is huge room for improvement. They should all meet in the morning and be given ONE offer from an affiliate network that they can drive traffic to any way they wish. They should then be given a $1,000 budget (each team) to use however they wish, and by the end of the day, the team with the highest revenue would win (special bonus being given to any team that turns a profit). During the bulk of the show, they should give an overview of the various methods that each team is using with 1 or 2 (only 1 or 2!) short segments with team members about any specific tactics they are doing. Even better, why not put a running conversion bar on the bottom to track the clicks/conversions for each team? Then at the end of the show, have an elimination where the lowest earning team has a member kicked off by the GURU.
I have to agree it sucks. It’s hard to follow WTF is even going on with the show. No intro explaing WTF is going on, and few shots of the actual contestants at the beginnig. I couldn’t bare to watch all of it.
The show was marketed as besing close to real world affilate marketing. Please…not even close.
Who ever was in charge of hiring suitable audio and video production for the show got jipped. Plain and simple.
The production sucks. The music sucks, the camera people suck, the hostess sucks, the set sucks, the post audio sucks, and not to mention the editing.
If the production was better this thread wouldn’t be ripping top affiliate challenge a new asshole, they would be raving about how great it is. Perception is everything.
You’re right on everything you said… TAC reminds me of Joel Comm’s pathetic attempt at internet TV reality when he did “The Next Internet Millionaire”.
Am I the only one who wants to watch episode 3? I get a great laugh at watching this show, even though it’s pretty bad and I agree with all the comments, I do have to say I get some laughs watching this.
Found it,
http://208.87.32.10/
forgot to .htacess the video folder
They have now resorted to “feel sorry for me” tactics and claim that they were bombarded w/ 1000 people trying to view the show in the first day. 1000? You really need two dual core servers, a load balancer “amazon bandwidth” and a “really nice rack” to handle that traffic? Yes I know it’s streaming video… but come on?!
Episode 3 is awful. Whats this 60 second TIPS turns into 4 minutes of non-sense, blog 101?
Since when is 60 seconds almost 5 minutes?!
And the worst flash player EVER, every button you hit- resets the video which you can’t skip then forward.
End rant, TAC is tanking like a bad ppc campaign.
HA ha, Wes, that is golden, what a moronic move….
You can already see episode 3 online; http://www.topaffiliatechallenge.com/episode_3.php
Spoilers:
It seems all they do is talk about “the ring” and the elimination.
What is even more stupid, is that they have an elimination round, and aftwards no one gets eliminated…
Anyway, again an episode with nothing of interest at all.
The funniest part is Jonathan Van Clute bragging about being “NET PROFITABLE”.. LOL.
Paul just drank TAC’s milkshake, he drank it up. Get some.
Perfectly said. I don’t mind the poor editing and the production. The content flat out sucks. The rules flat out suck. And, I’d say the results flat out suck so far.